Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Romney Again Promises to Defund Planned Parenthood

After getting himself in a bit of trouble with the religious right base for saying that passing anti-choice bills would not be part of his “agenda” — a claim his campaign quickly tried to walk back by saying he would sign any bill that came his way — Romney is now reiterating that he would move immediately to defund Planned Parenthood if elected:

On Wednesday, Romney said he would support removing the group’s funding through the federal budget, which must be passed by Congress.

“I think I’ve said time and time again that I’m a pro-life candidate and I’ll be a pro-life president,” he said. “The actions I’ll take immediately is to remove funding for Planned Parenthood. It will not be part of my budget.”

Let me be very blunt about this: If Planned Parenthood is defunded, women will die. Not a few of them, a lot of them. And children too. Because in many parts of the country, PP is the only available provider of birth control, STD testing, prenatal care and cancer screening for poor women. But hey, what are a few dead poor people when there are political points to be scored?

…and in other news: after flip-flopping on the deck for awhile, Mr Romney has reported that he has decided he is ‘definitely, possibly, kinda, sorta, maybe, for sure in favour of catch and release (or not)’…
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Dingo

Maybe this is a sign of things to come. Perhaps future election cycles will consist of Octobers of conservative Gish gallups of wildly inconsistent claims. Forget even bothering with the thin veneer of consistency; say literally whatever the local audience wants to hear, and expect your wider audience’s political loyalties, disbelief in contradictory news stories, or general cynicism won’t cost you votes.

A study two weeks ago showed that access to birth control cut the abortion rate by 62%. It also lowered the teen birth rate significantly. This is an important metric because it is highly correlated and causal for life long poverty.

Planned Parenthood has prevented more abortions in a day or week than the forced birthers have in a year.

It’s not about preventing abortions anyway. It’s about a War on Women, forced birthing, and female slavery.

“what are a few dead poor people when there are political points to be scored?”

Just a few people that won’t vote Rethuglican anyway and don’t have enough money to bother robbing. If you get rid of all these freeloaders,then maybe his view that the median family income is $250,000 would be a reality.

Romney is also going to cut taxes 20% and reduce the deficit. Or something. Their plans change often.

The only way to do this and not balloon an already high deficit is to cut federal spending. We know the social safety net will get cut. Romney is on public record as hating the 47% moochers and parasites such as teenage mothers with babies. It’s certainly not going to be defense or corporate welfare.

1. Restrict and hinder access to birth control.

2. More unwanted children are born to young, single mothers.

3. Who then apply for WIC, food stamps, and welfare.

4. Which has just been simultaneously cut.

What could go wrong here?

If you are a Theothuglican not much. A few squemish people might object to seeing starving mothers and their babies living on the street. But so what!!! They are just 47% moochers. Those bleeding hearts probably vote Democrat anyway.

So Romney expects to win in a landslide by angering half of America’s voting population?

It might work.

The polls show that this election will be close. Obama had a slight lead which has been steadily dropping. I can’t call it.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

The fact that it is a close race indicates something is dractically wrong with the USA.

1. Romney/Ryan are going to cut taxes 20% and have it be revenue neutral. This is impossible.

2. Romney/Ryan are going to defund Planned Parenthood, hinder abortion as much as possible, and cut the social safety net. You can’t do this with a lot more teenage mothers with babies in serious poverty.

3. It goes on and on. The level of callousness and magical thinking of those two is consistent and stunning.

Somewhere around half the US voters will vote for them anyway. Go figure. My latest theory is that it’s just time. 314 million lemmings decided to run over a cliff.

Romney is also going to cut taxes 20% and reduce the deficit. Or something. Their plans change often.

The only way to do this and not balloon an already high deficit is to cut federal spending.
[emphasis added – MH]

Actually Mr. Romney’s plans have not changed often when it comes to his budgetary promise. Instead he won’t reveal the needed details plus what we already know validates the math doesn’t work.

Re the portion of what you wrote that I italicized: Not true, this is only what the Romney campaign, Republicans, and conservative would like you to believe. Given Mr. Romney’s promise to increase the defense budget by $2 trillion more than the baseline, it’s mathematically impossible for him to do anything but balloon deficit spending if he were to carry this out. There’s two reasons.

The first reason is that there is not enough discretionary spending available to cut.

The second reason is that the level of spending cuts needed to make this happen would cause GDP to crash – not merely decrease, but crash far worse than any recession the U.S. has ever encountered. Since tax revenues are predominately a function of income which is a function of GDP, federal revenues would crash causing the deficit to increase. In addition that same crash would result in a massive increase in non-discretionary spending on items like food stamps, Medicaid (even after Romney’s proposed cuts), and extended unemployment insurance further increasing the deficit. Thirdly this increase in the debt combined with a crash in GDP- double would also increase the share of the budget which would go towards paying the interest on covering the current debt and the new debt to finance additional non-discretionary spending due to this crash.

We’d have a smaller economy with more debt to service with lower growth rates because government wouldn’t be contributing the aspects of a developed economy needed for optimal growth rates.

Surely Romney will do to us what he did to companies Bain invested in. He will load us up with debt (increase deficit spending), pay the investors first (tax breaks and no loophole closing for wealthy), and let the country go bankrupt or paying for his spending for generations to come. Why not? He and his friends come out ahead.

But hey, what are a few dead poor people when there are political points to be scored?

Paul’s Epistle to Rand?

Gregory in Seattle“So Romney expects to win in a landslide by angering half of America’s voting population?”
The only way for him to win is to anger half the population, and it’s worked pretty well since Nixon. The trick is doing it without scaring away women and un-white people.

@ Michael Heath:
You forgot to mention that Romney’s plans to crash the budget will finally make the Bond Vigilantes show up and add inflation to our woes. Stagflation of the 70’s would only be a fond wish.

It’s great that Romney has finally come out and specifically stated programs he would cut, like Planned Parenthood and PBS. Now if only he would explain how he’ll reduce the remaining 100% of his deficits.

The War on Poverty is waged against low-income families. By keeping a surplus blue-collar workforce, through immigration and uncontrolled birthrate, the economics of ‘rich and poor’ continues.
Both candidates are on the ‘rich’ side of the coin and have great interest in keeping the status quo. Where it’s always public services that get cut to reduce spending not politician or official CEO pay; privileged public sector inefficiently, entitlement and waste.
A mayor cut his budget, paying city officials at minimum wage. All the academia; certificates, experience, how could he insult these workers? Yet aren’t these ‘public servants’ insulting their own tax base by demanding more than the community can afford?
The private sector wage-earner is being served and entitled into generational poverty while paying for tax-guzzling whores and teenage pregnancies. It’s hard to decide which is worse.